ONE can only hope that the winners of the younger maidens at Portrush last Saturday will still be showing as much enthusiasm for the game at the age of 11 as Winged Leader did when recording his record-breaking 34th point-to-point success in the open at the Route meeting.

The win will have been covered in detail elsewhere in this issue (P47) but I would just like to pay tribute to David Christie who has trained the son of Winged Leader since the end of 2018, to Barry O’Neill who has partnered the bay to most of those wins and to John Hegarty and Jenny O’Kane who get so much obvious pleasure out of owning an older horse.